Friday, October 05, 2018

'Wankerati' and Other Terms of Abuse

I picked up a new piece of invective from Mark Steyn.

I believe he intends 'wankerati' to be coextensive with 'left-wing commentariat.' Read his The Turning Point and see if you don't agree. The brilliant polemicist offers up other choice phrases such as "malign carbuncles on the body politic." That's a reference to Di Fi (Dianne Feinstein), et al. And there's "a chamber full of posturing tosspots."

'Tosspot' is a general term of abuse that conjures up drunkard and sot. It puts me in mind of pot-valiant. One is correctly so described if one's courage derives from the consumption of spirits.

There is a use for abuse. It is a mistake to think that verbal abuse ought never to be employed.

Hands are best employed in caressing and blessing. But sometimes they need to be balled into fists and rudely applied to the faces of miscreants.

If one resorts to verbal abuse and invective one does not always thereby betray a paucity of careful thought informed by fact. Verbal abuse has a legitimate use in application to the self-enstupidated, the willfully ignorant, and those out for power alone regardless of truth and morality.

It is not reasonable to think that all are amenable to the dulcet tones of sweet reason; some need to be countered with the hard fist of unreason.

On the other side of the question, one should never resort to invective if one is trying to persuade a reasonable person. One should proceed as calmly as possible. Any resort to billingsgate will cause the interlocutor to assume that one lacks good reasons.

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If you studied the above properly you will probably have learned three or four new words.

If you have a large vocabulary you will love my blog; if you don't, you need it.